[Report 1920] / Medical Officer of Health, Brentwood U.D.C.

  • Brentwood (England). Urban District Council.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1920] / Medical Officer of Health, Brentwood U.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/40
    Bridlington, 27th May, 1921. Gentlemen, I have the honour to present to you my Annua] Report on the health of the Rural District of Bridlington during the year 1920. A notable year from whatever point of view you regard it> productive of many changes in Sanitary adminstration, and a widely extended popular interest in everything that concerns the health of the community especially so far as affects domestic hygiene, quickened markedly by the entrance of women into practical politics —national and domestic,—we yet are unable to point to any achieve- ment in administration at all commensurate with such epoch-marking legislation as the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1919, which, with its subsidiary Rules and Regulations, would have lead us to anticipate. No doubt much of this failure to realize the high ideals of the Ministry of Health must be laid at the door of trade-union restrictions on labour and the high prices of materials, which have in so many instances reduced the efforts of the responsible local authorities to a mere record of good intentions which have yet to materialise. In this District the modest programme of increased dwelling accommodation has been little more than begun, and for such modicum of achievement we are greatly indebted to private enter- prise. The reduction in price of material and the huge amount of unemployment ought, one would anticipate, enable us to show a better result in the near future, to the great comfort of both rate- payers and workers. Our one insanitary area is still occupied by the dwellings which have encumbered it for generations, and until the building trade shows a more amenable attitude, and alternative dwellings are available, there is little likelihood of the cramped, unsatisfactory, unhealthy houses thereon being demolished and the germ-sown ground being exposed to the oxydizing influence of the sun and the purifying effect of our good sea-air,